Craft Restaurant Review

: Picky eaters (with deep pockets) will love the menu at Tom Colicchio's Craft. In the dramatic dining room, featuring leather-lined walls, you create your own dish by ordering each element of the meal separately, choosing among daily changing lists of fish and shellfish, meat, vegetables, mushrooms, potatoes, grains and beans, condiments and sauces, which are all priced separately. For example, you can have your braised halibut ($30) with sautéed bok choy ($12) and fingerling potatoes ($10). Maybe braised beef short ribs ($30) with corn and bacon risotto ($16) and roasted zucchini ($12) is more your style? Oh yeah--it all comes on separate plates, so you can put it together in proportions just right for you. The idea is to get back to the essence of the food, focusing on first-rate ingredients and elemental cooking techniques, and indeed, all of the food is topnotch, but some may find the experience exhausting---not to mention overpriced. For dessert, choose among pastry, fruit (roasted or fresh), ice cream and sorbet. Or just give up, defeated, and pick up a pint of Ben & Jerry's on the way home. The handcrafted furnishings include ingenious blond-wood tables with a special velvet covered panel that pulls out for wine service. Colicchio made sure every definition of “craft” was used in his culinary experiment. If you're looking for gentler prices and a less strenuous meal, try the adjacent Craftbar.